Infuriating

August 19, 2017Letters to the Editor

Last weekend, a whole bunch of neo Nazis, Klansmen, anti-government militia members and other assorted hate groups gathered under the vanilla sounding banner of the “Alt-Right” in the normally peaceful town of Charlottesville, Va., allegedly to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. They chanted Nazi slogans, flashed the Nazi salute, and shouted “Heil Trump” as the marched. They also hurled foul epithets at the counter protesters who turned out to oppose them. Many carried flags emblazoned with swastikas ... the symbol of Nazi Germany. One of them killed an innocent woman.

It is infuriating to think that more than 450,000 American military personnel were killed and 600,000 more were wounded — including my father — during World War II, fighting the hatefully putrid ideology behind that emblem. Yet, here’s a new crop of white supremacists — who have the nerve to call themselves patriots and Americans — inciting violence that led to three deaths and many injuries. It is nauseatingly difficult to comprehend that we are still battling the foul plague of fascism and Nazism 72 years after the second World War.

What’s even more disturbing is that some Americans accept and even defend this abhorrent and repugnant behavior because they believe the ridiculous notion that caucasians in this country are somehow oppressed. Most amazingly, our president refused to call them out for the detritus they are in his anemic reaction to this horrible event. Then two days later, after harsh criticism and public pressure, he said what he should have in the first place. Then incredibly he doubled down on his original “many sides” comment.

Sadly, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised given Trump’s history of bigotry and the number of presidential advisers, spin doctors and Cabinet members with long track records as bigots and racists. Among them, Breitbart founder Steve “turn on the hate” Bannon, Stephen Miller the Jewish anti-Semite (go figure), Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the KKK loving attorney general, and that arrogant, Nazi-loving puke Sebastian Gorka.